Contributors Page

Contributors’ Page

Vinita Agrawal has been a freelance writer and researcher for the past 15 years. Her articles, stories, poems and features have been published in academic journals, casebooks, newspapers, magazines and websites. Some of the prominent publications featuring her work are, Femina, The Free Press Journal, Savvy, Marwar, Hobson’s Review, IRMA and ICPI journals, Sulekha, Babel, Kritya, Muse India, and indianwildlife, indianwriters and more.

Born in Bikaner, India she was educated in Kolkata and did her Masters in political science from Vadodara where she was awarded the UGC scholarship. She is a life member of the Indore Intach Chapter. She believes that writing is the best form of creative expression. She resides in Indore, India with her husband and son.

Murray Alfredson has worked as a librarian, lecturer and in Buddhist chaplaincy. He is a prize-winning poet, has published essays and poems in Australia, England, and America, and a collection, ‘Nectar and light’, in Friendly Street new poets, 12, Adelaide: Friendly Street Poets and Wakefield Press, 2007.

Judith Bader Jones worked as an R.N. in both adult and child psychiatry before she devoted herself to free lance writing. Her poetry and prose has appeared in Art Times, Buffalo Spree, Explorations, University of Alaska Southeast, Imagine, The Kansas City Star, Potpourri, The River Road Journal, The Same, Thorny Locust and numerous anthologies. She was a poetry editor for Kansas City Voices, 2001-2008. Her collection of short fiction, Delta Pearls received The William Rockhill Nelson 2007 Fiction Award. Finishing Line Press of Kentucky will publish her first chapbook of poems, Moon Flowers on the Fence, May 2010.

Maria Basile is a surgeon practicing in New York. She teaches courses in Medical Humanities at Stony Brook University School of Medicine. Her poetry has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Touch: the Journal of Healing, and anthologized with the creative writing of other physicians and health care professionals. A collection of her poetry, entitled Private Practice, is forthcoming from The Lives You Touch Publications.

Ed Bennett is a Telecommunications Engineer living in Las Vegas. Originally from New York City, his work has appeared in the Manhattan Quarterly and The Patterson Literary Review, New Verse News, The Externalist, Philadelphia Poets, Quill and Parchment, Autumn Sky Poetry and Touch: The Journal of Healing.

Stephen Bunch’s work has appeared recently in Umbrella and The Literary Bohemian. From 1978 to 1988, he published Tellus, a magazine featuring work by Jack Anderson, Jane Hirshfield, Denise Low, Paul Metcalf, Edward Sanders, and others. He received the 2008 Langston Hughes Award for Poetry from the Lawrence Arts Center. His chapbook, Cricket in My Shoe, is scheduled for publication by The Lives You Touch Publications in 2010.

Frank Cavano is a retired psychiatrist who has written poetry, published and unpublished, whenever moved in a powerful way by his experiences or the experiences of others. His goal is to listen to Heart and Soul without judgement and with compassion. He believes this is the entrance to all healing.

Sharon Charde has won many poetry awards, is published over 30 journals and anthologies, and has two first-prize-winning chapbooks as well as a full length collection, Branch In His Hand, published by Backwaters Press. She worked with delinquent teenagers for ten years and has led writing retreats for women for the last 17 years.

Mary Susan Clemons lives in Florida with her husband and two sons. She is a member of NFSPS (National Federation of State Poetry Societies), FSPA (Florida State Poetry Association), and a local poetry group, The Poet's Corner Workshop. She is a part-time moderator at Wild Poetry Forum, an on-line poetry workshop site.

Bebe Cook is a native Texan and comes from a southern U.S. oral tradition of story-telling. She believes poetry is an opportunity to create a bridge; a chance to invite the reader to share a few minutes, to get acquainted and loves that every time a poem is read it is transformed by the intent of the writer and the experiences of the reader into something new. She has placed in local and national poetry contests and continues to write poetry to record her own rooms and moments in order to bring that tradition to the page. Her work has appeared in Flutter Poetry Journal, Autumn Sky Poetry, Six Little Things and The Cartier Street Review. She enriches her writing with the diversity of gardening, photography, and working as an environmental scientist.

Maril Crabtree lives in the Heartland. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is poetry co-editor of Kansas City Voices. Her poetry has recently appeared in the Flint Hills Review, Coal City Review and Steam Ticket. She is also an energy healing practitioner and believes in the healing power of both allopathic and nontraditional medicine.

Stacey Dye is moved by poetry, music, and inspirational quotes, and she carries rocks inscribed with motivational words in her pockets. In the past few years she began to pursue the art of poetry with her primary focus being the human condition. She has been featured in Camroc Press Review, Mused, Sketchbook, and others.

O.P.W. Fredericks is the editor and publisher of Touch: The Journal of Healing and The Lives You Touch Publications. His writing style has been described as that of a narrative lyricist. He has been published in The Externalist: A Journal of Perspectives, Autumn Sky Poetry, and Philadelphia Poets 2009.

Born in Britain, raised in Zimbabwe, Dennis Greene has lived in Western Australia for the last 28 years. Diagnosed with Parkinson's at the age of 37 he took the opportunity to 'follow his bliss' and began writing. In 2000 he was invited to the United States to edit "Voices from the Parking Lot -Parkinson's perspectives." For reasons he can't quite figure his poetry never mentions PD and his prose is about nothing else.

A Pushcart Prize nominee, Tina Hacker was a finalist in New Letters and George F. Wedge competitions. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Bellowing Ark, Blue Unicorn, Piedmont Literary Review, I-70 Review, Mid-America Poetry Review, Kansas City Voices; two anthologies, Show + Tell and Missouri Poets; and upcoming anthologies from Helicon Nine Editions and the Imagination & Place Press.

Jodi L. Hottel is a writer and retired English teacher, living in Santa Rosa, CA. Her work has been published in the English Journal, The Dickens, Frogpond and anthologies from the University of Iowa Press, Tebot Bach, and the Healdsburg Arts Council.

Sally Houtman is an American-born writer who relocated to new Zealand in 2005. She is the author of a non-fiction book entitled, "To Grandma's House, We...Stay" which is in its third printing. She has written many non-fiction articles over the years. Recently she has had poetry published in Rustblind and fiction in Midnight Screaming and Flashquake. She lives in Wellington, New Zealand with her husband and two children.

Christine Klocek-Lim received the 2009 Ellen La Forge Memorial Prize in poetry. In 2010, her manuscript “Dark matter” was a semi-finalist for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize and the Philip Levine Prize in Poetry and her manuscript “The Quantum Archives” was a semi-finalist at Black Lawrence Press' Black River Chapbook Competition. She has two chapbooks: How to photograph the heart (The Lives You Touch Publications, November 2009) and The book of small treasures (Seven Kitchens Press, March 2010). Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, OCHO, Poets and Artists (O&S), The Pedestal Magazine, Diode, the anthology Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory and elsewhere. She is editor of Autumn Sky Poetry and her website is www.novembersky.com.

Laura Levesque grew up in Baltimore, MD. She earned her Bachelor’s in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. She is an active member of several online poetry boards and has been published in The Montage, Mirage, Alphabet Soup, and others.

Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, an online salon dedicated to bringing poetry into the every day. She has been reading and writing poetry since she could read and write. A lifelong Bergen County New Jersey resident, she lives and works two miles east of the hospital where she was born.

Jeanie McLeod retired from social work and from professional clowning at about the same time. Today, she lives on the very edge of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia where she spends as much time as possible outside. In bad weather she writes. Her prose and poetry have been published in approximately fifteen journals. She has won awards for each. She was also nominated for a Pushcart award.

Donal Mahoney a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, MO. He has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in or accepted by The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Commonweal, Public Republic (Bulgaria), Gloom Cupboard (U.K.), Revival (Ireland), The Istanbul Literary Review (Turkey), Touch: The Journal of Healing, Pirene's Fountain (Australia), and other publications.

Linda K. Marshall is a retired high-school English teacher, happily married for 43 years, mother of two, grandmother of three, preacher's kid, nearly life-long writer of little verses.

Daniel Milbo is a contemplative existentialist and poet. In his writing and photography, he hopes to capture that nucleus of the moment in which awareness blossoms to a greater experience of relationships both personal and universal.

Michael T. Milbocker founded Promethean Surgical Devices, and acts as Chief Science Officer, where he interacts directly with patients and doctors. Before starting Promethean, he was Principal Scientist at ABIOMED, and worked in their successful implantable artificial heart program. We're all familiar with the metaphor for the anatomical heart as center for emotion and the soul. However, patient's families and doctors alike frequently comment that people who receive artificial hearts are alive, but less human. Michael's poetry primarily addresses the importance of the family support network in patient outcomes associated with prosthetic correction of disease states.

Esther Greenleaf Mürer lives in Philadelphia. At 73, she considers herself an emerging poet. Her work has been recently published or is forthcoming in Mimesis,

The Externalist, Town Creek Poetry, and Unsplendid.

Sherry O’Keefe, a descendent of a Montana pioneer, mother of two, sister to four, cousin to dozens, credits her Irish upbringing for her story-telling ways and the healing touch from stories passed down through the generations. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barnwood Poetry Review, Avatar Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Two Review, Soundzine and Main Street Rag. Her chapbook, Making Good Use of August is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Gregory W. Randall majored in English and Latin at St.Olaf College and spent innumerable hours in the music library. Classical music by composers such as Sibelius and Brahms continue to inform both the structure and pacing of his poetry. His chapbook, Double Happiness, won the Fifth Annual Camber Press Chapbook Contest as judged by Mark Doty and is forthcoming in late 2010. His chapbook, A Room in the Country, was published by Pudding House Press in April, 2010. His chapbook, Uncommon Refrains, is scheduled for publication by The Lives You Touch Publications in the spring of 2010. He is a recipient of the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize for 2008 and a finalist for the 2008 White Pine Press book award. His recent work appears or is forthcoming in The Bitter Oleander, CQ, Cream City, GW Review, Louisiana Literature, Louisville Review, Pedestal, Rosebud, Southern California Review, South Carolina Review, Sow’s Ear, Stand, and other noted journals. Greg owns a financial planning practice in Santa Rosa, CA where he and his wife host the Londonberry Salon a quarterly celebration of poetry in their home.

Catherine A. Rogers is a widely unpublished poet who lives and teaches English in Savannah, Georgia. Some of her work has appeared in Kalliope: A Journal of Women's Literature and Art and online in Autumn Sky Poetry. An earlier version of her poem "Dirt" was selected for First Place in the August 2006 IBPC contest and was then selected as the IBPC Poem of the Year May 2006 - April 2007 by Mark Doty.

Mariejoy A. San Buenaventura teaches English and creative writing at Mahidol University in Thailand just outside Bangkok. Her writing consists mostly of poetry because she loves the way it allows her to contain an experience in a vial of words. She has been previously published in the Anthology of New England Writers 2007.

Scot Siegel lives in Oregon with his wife and two daughters. He is the author of one full-length poetry collection, Some Weather (Plain View Press, 2008), and two chapbooks, Untitled Country (Pudding House Publications, 2009) and Skeleton Says (Finishing Line Press, 2010). A second full-length poetry collection is due out from Salmon Poetry in 2012. Siegel works as an urban planner and serves on the board of trustees of the Friends of William Stafford. www.pw.org/content/scot_siegel

A former New York State politician, news broadcaster and award-winning copywriter, Kelly Grace Smith’s passion for the written and spoken word has directed her life for over three decades. A dedicated poet, her most recent poem, white lotus III, placed fourth in the 2009 Annual Writer's Digest Poetry Awards Collection.

Pat St. Pierre is a freelance writer and amateur photographer from Wilton, CT. Her photos have been on the cover of Wee Ones Magazine, Pond Ripples, Shine Literary Journal Magazine, and Flutter Poetry Journal. She has had children’s and adult nonfiction, fiction, and poetry published in a variety of places. Her chapbook Reality of Life has been published by Foothills Publishing Co. and her chapbook Theater of Life is forthcoming in 2010 from Finishing Line Press. You can read her blog at www.pstpierre.wordpress.com.

Arti Subramanian is a newly minted doctor who likes to pretend she has a life outside of medicine. She has been writing poetry since she was seven years old. During med school, her love of poetry and the words themselves became a lifeline to sanity and hope, an escape from sunlit illness and barred windows. Medicine influences all her poetry - either as an escape or as core, and she writes everyday just so she can pretend she is sane at all other times.

Janet Sunderland lives in Kansas City with her husband Cliff Kroski. Her work has appeared in The Writer, KC Voices, The Rockhurst Review, Lalitamba, theotherjournal.com, Imago Dei, and others. She’s an instructor at Avila University and Longview Community College and is completing a spiritual memoir, Standing at the Crossroad.

Alarie Tennille serves on the Board of Directors of The Writers Place in Kansas City, Missouri. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including Margie, Poetry East, ByLine Magazine, English Journal, Coal City Review, and The Mid-America Poetry Review.

Elaina Turpin lives in Oregon. She is the mother of three children. When she is not writing she spends most of her time in the garden. She is a self professed tree-hugger and has been known to randomly break into song.

Christian Ward is the author of “Bone Transmissions” (Maverick Duck Press, 2009). His work currently appears in Sage Trail, Grasslimb and Sein Und Werden and is forthcoming in Envoi and The Emerson Review.

Colin Ward currently lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada with his R.N. wife, Denise, and their corgi, Cora. His work has been anthologized in "Talus and Scree" and has appeared online in such venues as "Beside the white chickens," "Autumn Sky Poetry," and "Prairie Poetry."

Larina Warnock writes poetry & prose from Corvallis, Oregon where she lives with her husband and four children. Her work, which often details the healing journey of her family, has appeared as a top ten winner in Writer's Digest's poetry competition, Wheelhouse Magazine, The Oregonian, Space & Time Magazine, and many others. Her chapbook, Guitar Without Strings, is scheduled for publication by The Lives You Touch Publications in 2010. She serves as the site administrator for the poets.org discussion forum, editor of The Externalist, and chair of Writers on the River.

Yvette Wiley is a half Native American from the Muscogee Creek Tribe, and she lives in Tulsa, OK. She raised her daughter, earned a B.S. in biology, and works in the environmental and natural resources field. Poetry is a creative expression of the culture and the heartbeat of the lives which surround her. She has one previous publication in the Journal, The Externalist.

James S. Wilk is a practicing physician in Denver, Colorado, specializing in medical disorders complicating pregnancy. His work has appeared in a variety of literary and medical journals, including Measure, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Ars Medica, The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, The Raintown Review, The Barefoot Muse, and CHEST. His chapbook, Shoulders, Fibs, and Lies, is available through the author or through Pudding House Press.

Toni L. Wilkes’ chapbook, Stepping Through Moons published by Finishing Line Press, has been nominated for the California Book Award and the PEN USA Literary Award. Her poem "Once Again" first published in POEM received a Pushcart Prize nomination. Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in Confrontation, Cream City, Dos Passos Review, Poetry East, Soundings East, Southern Humanities Review and other noted journals. Toni lives in Santa Rosa, CA with her husband Gregory W. Randall where they host a poetry salon in their home.

Touch: The Journal of Healing

Submission Guidelines